Cascade

[cascadelitmag-blog]

Armies

there are a thousand armies

running rampant through my mind

there's a cataclysm of cacophony

that resounds in my head

Bouncing off of

the white walls

in my jail cell

I tried to negotiate

with the thousands of soldiers

shooting down my brilliance

but they told me

that they don't negotiate 

with terrorists

I asked them why I fell

into that category

and they replied

because you've tried

to bomb yourself

at least

a dozen times

[if-red-can-be-innocent]

Hospital Room

I am used to waking up to the staccato sounds of a heart monitor Used to waking up and seeing white coats, stethoscopes, and scrubs rushing past the window  I think I am more used to those white walls than the blue in my bedroom. I’m even used to waking up with bandages and casts and people surrounding me asking for answers.

I am an excellent liar. Better than I should be. I had to be.

Because people had to believe that this scar came from falling out of a tree And they had to believe that this broken leg came from playing with the dog And they had to believe that I was not trying to kill myself.

So when I woke up at age thirteen with my jaw wired shut and a white board on my lap There really was nothing to think about except what I am trying to hide this time Because I couldn’t remember who did this Or where it happened I didn’t recognize the sound of my heartbeat The white coats and stethoscopes and scrubs held no familiarity And the white walls made me long for home. I knew then that I would much rather cover up how I got these scars than have no recollection of the last 48 hours.

“You hit your head too hard,” they said, “when you were pushed in front of that car.” “It might take a week, or a month, or you might never remember at all.

The policeman came later that day and took the empty chair, Looked me in the eyes and asked if I could think of a single name. The names flew into my mind, one after another of the people who caused me pain.

The girls who call me names every chance they get Every person I’ve named a scar after on my wrist The boy who gave me my first sip The girl who sold me that first pill And the boy who sneaks into my room every night and tears me apart

But I couldn’t say a single name Because even though I couldn’t remember a single thing I knew without a doubt I wasn’t pushed. I didn’t fall.  I walked in front of that car So I could end it all. 

[cascadelitmag-blog]

Guilty

All of nature,

in all its beauty,

will never be you

and for that I feel guilty.

I will never see it

for how it really is,

for as long as you are here

there is nothing in this.

The trees, the lights

nothing will compare,

nothing is as bright

as your smile on a winter’s morning.

All of nature

in all it’s beauty

will never be you,

you must never feel guilty

  bluecollarrevolver.tumblr.com

[cascadelitmag-blog]

Until Light Breaks Through

Right now you’re probably kissing her lips.

Your arms placed tightly around her hips.

Your fingers slowly run through her hair.

Right now, one soul the two of you share.

You gently lay her down as if she’s a fragile thing that can easily break.

She grows more helpless with each breath you take.

She shivers now, so you hold her tighter.

Her head with each moment getting lighter and lighter.

Then it happens,

You whisper the three small words she’s been dying to hear

And she suddenly feels no more fear.

She has fallen completely into you

And you hold her close until light breaks through.

Copyrighted, Freckles1231. 2013

[cascadelitmag-blog]

meaning {td}

my life in transit en route to nowhere in particular drifting towards a catastrophe beyond conception

[cascadelitmag-blog]

Starting Forever

Your memory hangs above me like a parachute

Into the thickest fog Brutally honest, I want to cut the rope

so that the fall  breaks me open like a piano lid and you dissolve  like music

[cascadelitmag-blog]

The Foundations of a Place Called Love

        The word “love” has many different forms. On its own it can be interpreted as an emotion, something we feel toward another. We can also examine the verb form of love: In this context it is implied that love is something that we do. Love, when used as a noun, can be thought of as something that we give and take from one another or as a place that we fall in and out of (if we choose to be that literal.)These many definitions of the tiny four letter word have caused me to question the true essence of being in love. Is love more than merely an emotion or a feeling which stirs our souls?

  At the start of any relationship, love is mostly an emotional attraction that we feel toward another. However, with time love becomes something more tangible. It becomes something you do every day. (For example, cooking their favorite meal for them can be seen as a form of love.) It turns into something that you give every time you compromise for them and something that you take each time they reciprocate. Personally, I’ve come to the realization that love starts out as a feeling but soon needs to be backed with something more substantial: Physical actions which are manifestations of that emotion. Otherwise the feeling begins to fade; The foundations of that place we once called love will soon begin to crumble and we’ll be left standing in the ruins of what we thought was love but never grew to be more than infatuation.

 Copyrighted. Freckles1231. 2013

[cascadelitmag-blog]

pressed flowers { td }

they are the book and i, the flower. pressed tightly, unwillingly between their suffocating words they have the best of intentions but they do not know that they have snapped my stem

[cascadelitmag-blog]

Pigeon by Jim Johnstone

  Arnold awoke to the faint sound of knuckles rapping on glass. It was a dull echoing thud, repeated in swift triplets. Rubbing the sleep from his eyes and stretching his left arm across the empty side of the bed, he became aware of the persistent tapping, which was not, as he had initially hoped, a residual element from his dream.

  He pulled on his dressing gown, wriggled his toes into the slippers by his bed and went to investigate the sound. Entering his kitchen, his attention was drawn by the sight of a delicate hand reaching over the fence from the other garden, tap-tapping on the glass pane of his back door.

  ‘Mr. Whitmore! Mr. Whitmore, can you hear me?’ A voice belonging to the hand called.  Arnold opened the door just before the third knock of the set came.

  ‘Mr. – Oh! Hello, Mr. Whitmore.’ The sharp American voice and hand belonged to his new neighbour, Carrie. She stood on the other side of Arnold’s fence, wrapped in a staple silk kimono, her arms tightly locked around her waist; she shivered slightly.

  ‘Mr. Whitmore, I have been out here for twenty minutes trying to raise you!’

  ‘So?’ Arnold replied, leaning complacently against the open door whilst cracking his knuckles, expelling the fatigue of sleep from his joints.

  ‘So, your midnight target practice has once again left a dead pigeon on my lawn!’ Her shrill Yankee wail was too much for him to stomach at this time of the morning, and Arnold winced at her pronunciation of the last syllable of her complaint.

  Carrie stared at him impatiently, waiting for a response. She was referring to Arnold’s favorite sport: hunting. Of course, this was not like the hunts he used to go on when he was younger; shooting pigeons with a BB gun was a far way off taking down a deer at five hundred yards with a high-powered carbine rifle, equipped with customized sights. No, those glory days were over, and now Arnold had to settle for something a little more modest. He had come to accept this and it was sufficiently entertaining… when there were no interferences of course.

  ‘They’re dirty, you know.’ Arnold replied, after languidly inspecting the state of his fingernails.

  ‘What?’ She asked, offering her ear; gesturing for him to speak up.

  ‘I said, they are dirty! You should thank me. You don’t want bird-shit on your nice new BMW do you?’

  ‘Look, I don’t care about the fucking pigeon, I just want to know what you’re going to do about it?’ Her voice had dropped, and he could see her knuckles turning white, her fingers digging into her sides in frustration. Her frustration amused Arnold, and this in itself had become another kind of sport. Day after day, while the husband was at work he would enact small confrontations with her, just to get a rise. When the husband: ‘Joel’ or ‘Joe’ something, would come home, Arnold would play the forgetful, lonely old man act. He was as good at evoking sympathy, as he was with rage.

   She closed her eyes, trying to cool her temper, breathing deeply. ‘Please… come round, when you are ready,’ opening her eyes, she was now more passive, to Arnold’s great disappointment. ‘And dispose of the dead pigeon you left on my lawn.’

  ‘Maybe you should eat it.’ He replied, not waiting to see her reaction, although it would have pleased him. Arnold turned with a wry smirk across his face, closing the door behind him with the intention of returning to his bed and reading the newspaper. As he walked through his kitchen, the linoleum cold against his bare soles, he heard the sharp crack of her back door slamming. He giggled like a little boy.

   Instead of getting back into bed Arnold stood in the middle of his bedroom looking out of the window at the pear tree that pushed up against his fence, the branches stretched out like the spokes in an umbrella to cover his, and Carrie’s garden. The light flickering through the gaps between the leaves, which swayed in the breeze made him feel more awake, less groggy. There was no need to get back into bed now.

   He reached for the newspaper, which lay across his desk that had become cluttered with dried-up pens, half-opened letters, a stack of dirty plates, sweet wrappers and a single photograph of his wife Diana. Although the rest of the house resembled the state of the desk, this of all things made him feel guilty. His wife had always encouraged him, the mucky old man, to have a clean workspace; ‘somewhere uncluttered to unclutter your mind,’ she would say. Her picture did not belong here amongst the mess. Usually it was propped up, in the absence of a sturdy frame, on the bookcase next to Don Quixote. It must have fallen down in the middle of the night.

  Arnold delicately placed the photo back in its usual location. Then, in a surge of unexpected frenzy, with one hand on the edge of the table he took a breath and swept across the wooden surface, pushing the pile of meaningless clutter off the desk. It was clear, but the floor now bore the brunt of his outburst: just another mess all the same. Looking up, he gazed out the window at the pear tree again, to see another pigeon confidently squatting on one of the mid-level branches.

   ‘Fucker!’

   He rushed out of the room and picked up his BB gun, quickly returning to his vantage point. He loaded the wooden rifle with a small metal pellet, making sure not to open the window before hand. Arnold didn’t want this cocky little bastard alert to his presence. He would open the window last, avoiding the chance of the bird flying off before he was ready to shoot. When he had slid the window open, ever so watchfully quiet; Arnold lifted one leg up onto the leather office chair, leaning his weight on it. Lining up the sight of the rifle with the rotund belly of the grey pest, its gammy legs buckling under its full weight, Arnold prepared to eradicate its existence in this world. Then he heard the sound of Carrie’s back door opening again.

  ‘Fuck you yank!’ He whispered under his breath before taking the shot. However, before he could drop another pigeon onto her lawn, the chair creaked. The creak became a slight swivel, and just before the moment of execution, the chair turned and Arnold’s leg gave way. Slipping to the floor and onto his back, he let the gun fall beside him. It was then that he heard the scream. For a moment, Arnold stared at the ceiling, unable to acknowledge the wail echoing up between the two houses from the garden below. After a while, it was unbearable, and like a scared little boy throwing water balloons at cars he gripped the edge of the desk with his fingertips and slowly raised his head to catch a glimpse of what he had done.

   There she was: kneeling on the ground, her hands covering her left eye, tiny trickles of red dripping between her fingers. Next to her was a spade, which held the dead pigeon from the night before. The wailing would not stop. Arnold looked up, and sitting there in pear tree, was the fat, grey pigeon, cocking his head in disapproval.

   ‘Silly old man.’

[cascadelitmag-blog]

"Phosphene" An original story; Chapter One.

When I was young, death never effected me. My pets died all the time, countless goldfish down the toilet and hamsters in shoeboxes in the backyard. Few tears were shed. The one time that dug pretty deep though, was when I was twelve.

     Before my life went to shit, it used to be pretty great. Very all-American, complete with a golden retriever who's name was Pan. There was a park out by our house - it wasn't much, really. A rusted old slide, a gnarled old oak tree, and pair of swings that I was honestly a bit scared to play on. Hell, you could almost see the infection all over it. But that's beside the point. I was out rather early, the grass still damp and the ground still cool from the night before, and as I walked, my sneakers made a squeaking sound under my trainers. Little twelve-year old me didn't have a care in the world. As I walked by the big oak tree, a shiver ran up my spine. My daddy used to call it 'someone walking over your grave', and now I believe him - I've probably got tons of people walking over my grave. But oh, I didn't know what was in store for me. As I turned the corner, I noticed the base of the old oak. It was sticking out a bit more than usual. I took a tentative step forward, head tilted in curiosity. And then I froze, my breath hitched in my throat, and nothing but pure fear coursed through me. I can remember this vividly. The feeling I had when I saw him, the smell, the sight, the taste of copper in the back of my throat. Everything.          The man was slumped against the tree, head slung across his own shoulder, eyes bulging, hair pasted to his head with a sheen of nighttime dew. The scream that was bubbling inside my throat stuck, and no matter how hard I breathed or how many steps I reeled back, it wouldn't come out. Until I noticed two things. His neck was not intact, in fact, it was very far from it. It had, though I did not realize, been snapped. Now, I see why that registered in my twelve year old mind as peculiar. Not just anyone can come up and snap some poor man's neck. They'd have to be pretty damn powerful.          The second thing; he was pale. Now, I'm no fool, I'm aware that when you die you aren't exactly glowing with the sound of music or whatever, but he was unnatural. You could see every single vein in his hands and neck, and I knew immediately he was drained of every single little red drop of blood in his body. That's when the scream dislodged itself from it's dark little trap in my throat, and burst forth with so much potency that I was afraid that the dead guy might, well, 'un-dead'. Now, when you scream at such a high decibel, people are going to hear it, and when I say people, I mean the whole goddamned neighborhood. I screamed again. And again. And again. After that, things are a bit blurry. I remember arms, and more screams, and my mother's face, and my father shouting for someone to call nine-one-one, and then I think I passed out.          I slept for weeks in my bed, before finally realizing somewhere in my twelve-year old mind that this was not helping me at all, so I forced myself back into school, ignoring the chatters of, "Hey, isn't that the girl who found a dead guy at that one place?". This leads us to where I am now. Seventeen years old and going nowhere in life but therapy, which my mother still insists I go to, and school. Honestly, I'm a bit of a loner. All I have are my sketchpads. But I'm OK with that.          And now that I'm here, telling you this story, I'm getting an uneasy feeling. Like someone's outside my window, peering in. You know the feeling when you're lying in bed at night, and you hear the house creak, and no matter how many times you tell yourself it was just a tree or the wind, the feeling creeps up on you. And like icy fingers trailing down your spine, your mind goes into overdrive, thinking about every single little scary thing that's ever happened, every scary movie you've ever watched.

     So go on and tell yourself (and i will too, even though it doesn't help) "it's just the house settling". But stop and think for a moment when you're in bed, feet tucked under the covers as if the murderer you think is under your bed happens to have a knack for dragging people out by their feet, what if it's not just the house settling? Maybe there really is someone outside, waiting for you to turn out your light. Maybe we're not safe with our locked windows and drawn curtains, because maybe the monster is us. It's in our heads, and it has no plans of getting out anytime soon.

[cascadelitmag-blog]

I'm actually quite interested! Anymore information? :)

Just submit any form of writing and/or art and we'll look it over and publish it! 

[cascadelitmag-blog]

Hey, don't know if my last message went through. I have material for your magazine if you are still looking. Tumble name duskwaith

we're always looking! Your message didnt go through, though. care to send it again?

[cascadelitmag-blog]

Pollution

Pollution

The world is polluted.

Think of how much gets touched by unwashed hands.

Think of how spenders think solely about brands.

Think of how many gallons of gas a plane wastes before it lands.

Think of how some stains will never be cleaned in Green Bay’s stands.

Think of how music corporations screw over so many bands.

Time isn’t going to last forever, all we’re doing slipping through the sands.

-S.P.

[cascadelitmag-blog]

Generation Ennui

It's a cancer in the veins; it's a poisoned seed left to grow; it's the sparrow caught in mid-flight, the hawk and his need to eat flesh, simple meat charged with electricity to write the most beautiful love songs; to burn down the house; to self-immolate over a principle/ an idea.  A thought. It's our war on drugs, a war on crime, wars on poverty meant to end in our time; wars against the blacks and wars against the not-so-white; Like an old shoe, the centuries have taught us to wear the battle well, progress for progress' sake. We lose until we fight and fight until we lose again or until the other man is too exhausted to raise a fist.   It's circles, now and again The Wheel of Time creaks and calls with fits and shakes as the snakes consume their own tails and die upon their own sword -- The dead we call heroes  and maimed are named lucky. We draw lines in the shifting sands like children; We call men wealthy whom consume the most with their imaginary number games, a credit to their class. We spend our lives hunting in the urban jungle for life, liberty and happiness, but it never comes. We spin endlessly into butter, hardening like gold, pliable and impermanent, but pretty tasty nonetheless, a bullet to the heart.

[cascadelitmag-blog]

     No.

You are a soldier. You are not made to be weak. 

              An order is absolute, from God as if you cannot tell the difference.

  It is not your place to question upon who’s head you bring down your blade.

For God commands, and you are his loyal son.

            See your brother? The brave knight of his father. He is not broken. 

 He is glorious. To follow in his footsteps is honorable, do you see?

But then, you always were the b l a c k  s h e e p.

{Supernatural: Sam Winchester}

[cascadelitmag-blog]

Cascade is now open for submissions!

(submit here)

[cascadelitmag-blog]

Hello!

I have received amazing feedback for The Cascade and I’m so excited to get it up and running! Everything should be set up by Thursday or Friday at the latest, as i still have some kinks to work out on the blog itself.

Thank you to all the people who messaged me and showed interest in submitting - I cant wait to see what you submit!

Thanks guys, have an amazing day!